


Two Thousand Years

by ylic



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Past Lives, Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Angst, Broken Families, Bullying, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-05-18
Updated: 2014-06-13
Packaged: 2018-01-25 13:56:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1651079
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ylic/pseuds/ylic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Through many lifetimes, Levi and Erwin's destinies have been interwoven, and finally, they meet again as people. Levi is a 17-year-old high school student. Erwin is an 18-year-old university student studying overseas.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is a WIP, unbetaed and experimental (and may possibly fall flat on its face), so please read on only if you're all right with that. With this fic, I'm trying to bring in a trope - reincarnation - that is very popular in Japanese fic/art but not so much in English fic/art. It is set in modern-day Japan, in the writer's hometown.

Levi’s earliest memory is of his mother.

“But I was just trying to help,” Levi pleads. She shakes her head, takes a long puff from her cigarette, and blows the smoke at a plate of boiled cabbage and a single potato. He can almost see the ash particles, crawling with grey, settling onto the skin of the potato.

“You’ve got a funny way of showing it,” she spits, as she puts out her cigarette on the side of his glass of water. It goes out with a fizz, leaving a black stain on the condensation that drips slowly down and will surely leave a mark in the yellowing tablecloth. She stands, dragging the chair, and storms off into her room.

He uses the edge of an old tin of crackers to push the cigarette butt off the table into the trash can, and scarfs down his dinner while keeping an eye on his mother’s bedroom door. He carries a chair to the sink and stands on top of it on his tip-toes, does his dishes, does his mother’s dishes, and spends the rest of the day curled up with a blanket on the living room floor.

But Levi knows that the memory cannot be his own, because he never grew up in an old crumbling cottage in a dark, underground town with no electricity. He didn’t spend his childhood picking fights with other boys to come home to scrape his mother’s leftovers off cracked porcelain plates.

It’s just a dream that he’s had since he was a kid. It seems real, but so do the shadows of monsters behind your curtains at night when you’re a frightened, lonely 8-year-old kid whose mother hasn’t come home in three days.

Levi tips the pan to one side, letting the fried egg slip onto the piece of toast on his plate. He sits down at the dining table and eats it slowly. If his father came home last night, there aren’t any signs, but thinks there might be a dent in the cushion of the two-seater that wasn’t there when he went to bed last night.

At the station, he blends himself in with the businessmen and walks all the way to the front, just behind the driver’s compartment. His uniform is black and nondescript, and he is quickly swallowed by the forest of adults towering around him. He’s not a child anymore, but he has always been short.

The train comes on the dot, just the way Levi likes it. Through the 25-minute ride, he is pressed against the shoulder of an old sweaty geezer with his hands thrust awkwardly into the air. He wraps his arms around his middle and tries not to breathe too deeply, tries not to think about what is most definitely waiting for him when he sets his foot in the classroom.


	2. Chapter 2

It wasn’t always like this for him.

In kindergarten, his teachers loved him because he did three things that the other kids didn’t do: he did as he was told, he was quiet, and he rarely made a mess. Even though he was the same age as the rest of them, the other kids called him “big brother” and asked him for help. He even felt good about himself for a while; the adults would talk about the well-behaved boy in Dr. Hanji’s class and wasn’t he so nice? Isn’t he such a good example to the other kids? Why don’t you be like Levi and eat all of your vegetables?

Levi’s second earliest memory is also of his mother.

She is watching him eat, because she’s waiting for papa to come home. She’s fixed him a plate of curry rice - his favourite, because it’s a Friday and she tells him that she feels like celebrating the end of the week. She gives him extra cubes of beef in his curry and a tall glass of milk because she wants him to grow.

She makes sure that the rice is on one plate, and the curry in another, in his favourite bowl, shaped like a bird. She knows that this is the way he needs it to be. He takes one small scoop of the curry gravy, pours it neatly on one mound of rice, and then scoops that up quickly so that the curry doesn’t touch the bottom of the plate. He never eats the vegetables and the meat in the curry with the rice; those need to be eaten separately and individually.

His mother doesn’t get angry or impatient, because she knows that he has his ways of doing things that make sense to him. She just sits and smiles, and talks about her friends from karate class, their children, and how they are entering middle school. It’s too difficult for him to understand, but he eats as slowly as possible. He likes the sound of his mother’s voice, and the fact that it’s just the two of them in the small apartment. All he feels is the sound of his mother’s voice wading gently into his ears, the distant sound of cars driving along the main road outside, and the gentle taste of the curry in his mouth.

Mrs Mori’s son from downstairs scored very well in the entrance examinations, and he’s going to one of the top middle schools in the area. All Levi knows is that he will do the same, or better. But middle school is such a long time away, and he is still so small. He takes his time to finish his glass of milk, but he does, because his mother says he’ll need it to grow, and because he shouldn’t waste his food. He clears his side of the table and helps his mother with the dishes, standing on a small chair so that he can reach the sink.

His mother tells him that he needs to wait half an hour before he can take a bath, so he sits in the living room and reads a book about planes.

But that’s Levi Before. Levi Now is draped over his battered desk in the back of the classroom as the teacher drones on about calculus. His posture isn’t helping with his heartburn and he can feel the acid coming up in the back of his throat, but he swallows it back down.

School lunch today was curry rice. It came on one plate, the curry already poured on top of the rice. As always, whoever was in charge of lunch today gave Levi the last scrapings of the rice, so it was all stuck together in clumps, with bits of the dried film that forms at the bottom of the rice pot mixed in. There wasn’t anything in the curry; just flecks of some vegetable that had remained in the pot after everything had gone out to the rest of the class and the teacher.

The bottle of milk that he was given had been unsealed, but he drank it anyway, because he’d rather be sick than pour it down the drain. He thinks about the cow in the farm where the milk came from, locked up in a stable with its udders connected to a pump, and he can’t pour the milk down the drain. Now he doesn’t know whether the ache in his middle is because of that, or because he “fell” down the stairs earlier on his way to the library.

He feels a sharp pain on the back of his head as somebody hits him with a ruler. He ignores it. There was a time when things like this would make him cry, but Levi is sixteen, and is used to this by now.


	3. Chapter 3

Levi turns seventeen, and Levi’s life remains constant. He wakes up, showers, makes breakfast if he feels like it, puts on his clothes, goes to school, goes to the library, buys dinner, comes home, eats his dinner, does his homework, bathes, uses his computer, goes to bed, and sleeps. He thinks of it as a to-do-list that loops, so he can pretend that the pain, the guilt, and the fear between all of that doesn’t exist.

Sometimes, his next-door neighbour, Mr Pixis, has some errands for him. This disturbs his to-do-list, but he doesn’t mind it, because Mr Pixis is old and strange and doesn’t really care about Levi, not in the good way, nor in the bad way. Today, he’s asked to buy some cat food for Mr Pixis’ many cats. He goes home to change into something baggy and innocuous first, so that he’s not easily recognised by his classmates.

He’s at the pet shop in the largish mall near the ocean when he sees the huge man bending over the cans of cat food, looking completely lost. It’s obvious at first glance that he is not a local, from his impressive height to his peroxide blond hair.

He’s not entirely sure what possesses him, other than the fact that the man, despite his impressive height, appears to be completely lost. It’s then that he notices that the man is probably not much older than himself, although he’s not entirely sure with white people. He glances towards the cashier and its staff, who are usually service-oriented to the point of being annoying, but today, they all seem to have developed a temporary blind spot in the shape of a tall, muscular, altogether very un-Japanese man-slash-boy.

“Can I help?”

The blond man turns around, and sets his eyes at a point much heigher than Levi’s 160 centimetres. Levi crosses his arms.

“I thought you might… uh, do you speak English?”

The blond man stares back at him, his mouth open. Levi sighs. It’s just his luck. The man is probably Russian or Scandinavian, and doesn’t speak a word of the language he spent the past ten-or-so years teaching himself in his bedroom using the internet.

“Your English is very good.”

Levi rolls his eyes. “No shit.”

The blond man raises his eyebrows, and continues to stare. Levi shuffles his feet.

“So… do you have trouble reading the Japanese, or what?”

“Yes. I’m trying to find some cat food for kittens. Probably about 3 or 4 months, by the look of them. I’ve been seeing some near my apartment, and they look underfed.”

Levi nods, and takes out a notepad, writing the key words down. “キトン is the word you’re looking for, that’s just a literal transcription of the English word ‘kitten’ in katakana. If they live to be older than a year, you can start giving them the ones that say １歳から.”

“You’re rather depressing.”

“I’m just being realistic. You’re rather rude.”

The blond man takes the piece of paper with one hand and rubs at the back of his neck with another. “Thank you, …”

“Levi.”

“That’s not a Japanese name.”

“No, it isn’t.”

“...”

Levi shrugs. “My father was a British Jew.”

“So that’s where you got the accent.”

“He died before I spoke my first word.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.”

Levi looks up at the man, a smirk playing at his lips. The man doesn't look flustered or embarrassed, as Levi expects, but returns Levi’s gaze with a faintly amused sort of look. Levi snorts.

“So what’s a guy like you who doesn’t speak a lick of Japanese doing in a deadbeat town like this?”

“I’m an exchange student.”

Levi raises his eyebrows. “There aren’t many universities around here that are good enough to have international exchange programmes, let alone have its name on any kind of international document.”

“I commute to the city.”

“You voluntarily put yourself through 2 hours of the tuna can commute every day?”

The man laughs. “Where I come from, the trains aren’t as fast as they are here. It’s really not that bad compared to what I know. And I didn’t really want to live in the city. I wanted a little experience of the Japanese countryside.”

Levi scoffs. “And how has your experience of the ‘Japanese countryside’ been so far?”

“A bit of a culture shock, but quite nice, actually. The air quality is good, and the mountains are lovely. The commute isn’t a huge problem since I like to be up early anyway, and besides, it’s only for another 10 months. I can manage.”

Levi shrugs, plucking two bags of adult cat food, one bag of senior, and a box of tuna cans from the shelves. Science Diet and Mon Petit, as Mr Pixis likes it. He staggers a little under the weight.

“You should still try to learn some Japanese,” he says, as he moves to the cashier. “You could get into trouble. And you shouldn’t expect people, especially people here, to speak your language just because it’s one of the more dominant languages in the world.”

The man laughs, and scratches his head again. Levi at this point is quite impressed with how unflustered the man manages to look while looking a little sorry. He grabs a bag of food for kittens, and follows.

“I got into a bit of trouble when I first came here. I got very sick on the plane, and asked to see a doctor as soon as I landed… but for some reason, they took me to a dermatologist. They only got it when I couldn’t hold it in anymore and threw up all over some of their potted plants.”

Levi pulls a face. “And we call it an international airport.”

“You’re right, though. I should learn. All I can say is ‘thank you’, ‘I’m sorry’, and ‘my name is Erwin Smith’.”

“Well, it took you long enough, Erwin Smith,” quips Levi as they walk out of the store, Levi with his eco-bags bursting with cat food.

“Are you walking home?”

“I’ve still got a year until I can get a license, haven’t I?”

“You’re seventeen?”

Levi shrugs, and continued to walk towards the exit. He was really starting to regret opening his mouth.

“I thought you were much younger.”

Levi snorted again. “And how old are you? Thirty?"

“Eighteen,” Erwin replies, and grabs the carton of canned food from under Levi’s arm. “Come on, I’ll drive you home. I’ve got a _kei_ parked just outside.”

Levi wonders to himself if Erwin can really fit into a kei before he shrugs and decides to follow. _Oh, why the hell not._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A small disclaimer-slash-explanation that you don't really need to read unless you're particularly interested in Japan and language education in Japan:
> 
> Views expressed in this work don't necessarily reflect views held by the author. Things said about Japan, Japanese people, and language by both Erwin and Levi are based on my own experiences of being a born-and-bred Japanese person and a bilingual, so I do think that they reflect to some degree reality in some parts of Japan.
> 
> People are slowly but surely starting to understand the value of being able to actually use English (as opposed to just being able to pass tests that don't really test how well a person can actually communicate in real-life situations), so it probably isn't as bad in major cities, especially at airports. That said, it's also about opportunity - in the setting I'm working with, people like Levi who can speak to foreigners like Erwin are really, really rare, not for lack of trying but because there are such little opportunities and incentives for people to speak English in general. It is also about privilege, because most people don't have the spare cash to hire an English tutor, or to send their kids to schools that have good English programmes.
> 
> My reincarnation of Levi is definitely unrealistic and "cheat mode" in terms of his language ability, since he is a high school student who can apparently speak English well enough to banter with Erwin. But, eh, Levi is "cheat mode" in canon as well, so cut me some slack here. He's humanity's strongest language self-teaching expert, or something.


	4. Chapter 4

Levi won’t admit it to anyone, but it’s the nicest day he’s had in years. Erwin ends up messing up with the directions, even though Levi gave them very clearly, and they end up near the river. Erwin runs round the corner to the 7/11 to buy some _onigiri_ , and they decide to have dinner on the roof of Erwin’s secondhand _kei_ \- or at least, after Erwin has mopped it down with a washcloth.

They lie on the roof and watch the airplanes coming in to land at the airport. Levi has good eyesight, and can tell which plane belongs to which airline, and where it’s likely to have come from. There’s Qantas with its white kangaroo on red, Finnair with its white F on blue, and the violet-winged Thai Airlines. Levi confesses that he has never travelled outside of Japan, although he would like to go and see the rest of the world and has walked around most of the places he wants to visit on Google Street View. Erwin has been on every continent except Antarctica, and tells stories from his travels in St. Petersburg to Cairo to Rio de Janeiro to Inverness.

Levi lets himself drown in the portraits that Erwin paints of the cities, the people, the food, and all the things that Levi can only begin to imagine. They talk about the kind of music they like to listen to, the books they like to read, the things that they feel strongly about.

Erwin doesn’t ask questions about Levi’s faded hoodie or the scars and bruises on his body. He doesn’t comment on how Levi looks around every now and then like an animal wary of its predator. After a while, Levi relaxes. He forgets about his life for a while and pretends that he’s a traveller in the desert who has met another traveller.

It starts to get cold and dark after a while, and Erwin grabs a blanket from the boot. It’s large enough to wrap both of them, and Levi clings to one end, wrapping his hand around the soft material and breathing in Erwin’s scent. It’s strange how familiar this feels, and the rational part of his mind says that it’s just his loneliness clinging to this large, warm, friendly stranger. His mind wanders back to all the things that have been on the news recently, about people getting attacked for no reason after dark on the streets.

“You’re quite trusting for a Japanese person, you know.”

Levi glares. “What are you trying to say?”

Erwin throws his hands up in defence. “I don't mean it as an insult. Most people around here aren’t very keen on going somewhere with a total stranger, or even talking to strangers beyond the usual hello and thank you - unless of course, they work in the service industry or are old people who have gone a bit senile.”

Levi snorts. “Are you going to kidnap me?”

“Maybe.”

“You’ll have to kill me then - my aunt won’t have enough money to pay for a ransom, even if she wanted to.”

“Then maybe I’ll kill you.”

“Maybe you will.”

Levi stretches and stifles a yawn. The moon is bright, and he thinks that he can see the rabbit pounding on some mochi in it, like his mother used to tell him when he was young.

“You seem pretty calm for someone who may or may not get murdered tonight.”

Levi shrugs, and checks his watch. It was 10:12PM. Tomorrow was still a Thursday. He doesn’t want the night to end.

“I should take you home,” Erwin says, jumping off the roof. Levi follows reluctantly, and folds up the blanket to pass back to Erwin.

The drive back is quiet - Erwin has the radio switched off in his car. Levi starts to wonder if he went a little too far with his joke. The time is 10:30PM now, the green light of the digital car clock on the dashboard reads, and he starts to feel queasy. He’s not sure why he cares so much, but he doesn’t want to fuck this - whatever “this” is - up.

Luckily, they reach Levi’s apartment block before it gets too bad. It’s an old three-storey block with no elevators, and most of the lights are still on. Erwin kills the engine and wordlessly carries Levi’s three bags and one box of cat food, waiting for Levi to lead the way.

“I never asked you about these,” he says, as he walks up the rickety metal stairs.

“It’s for a neighbour. He’s too old to go out and carry so much cat food back, so I do it for him.”

“So you can be nice.”

Levi shrugs. They’re in front of his room now, and it doesn’t look like Erwin is going to leave until he’s set the cat food down inside his house. Whatever, Levi thinks, and opens the door.

Erwin sets the cat food down on the floor near the front door, and looks around. Levi’s apartment - more of a studio in terms of size - is sparsely furnished. There’s a low square table near a wall, and next to it, a cabinet and a small pile of cushions and blankets. A small corner is the kitchen area, and there is a door that presumably leads to the bathroom. All four walls of the living area are covered in shelves, two thirds of which carry books, and a third of which appears to be a closet. There’s a school uniform blazer hanging from one of the closet knobs.

“You live alone?”

“Yeah. Both my parents are dead, and my aunt couldn’t take me in, so my grandmother is letting me stay in this apartment.”

“That’s got to be pretty rough.”

“Yeah, well, if you’re going to kill me, nobody’s going to notice for a good while or miss me very much, so it’s pretty ideal. Just don’t make it hurt too much, is all I ask.”

Erwin stares.

“You’re still in high school, right?”

Levi shrugs. It’s 10:45PM and he’s counting down the hours till he has to go to school again.

“Well, good night,” Erwin says, his voice gentle. Levi just nods, and Erwin takes the hint. He’s just about to step over the threshold of Levi’s apartment when he turns around.

“Can I have your number?”

Levi shrugs and reaches down for a piece of paper.

“Here, just… if you could type it in the phone.” Levi complies.

Erwin leaves, and Levi has to sit down for a while to collect his thoughts. He’s not sure what the past five hours was, whether the slightly panicky feeling in his chest is really valid, and what his mother would think of him if she was alive. He’s never done anything quite like this before. There’s a first time for everything, he supposes.

Slowly he takes off all of his clothes and goes into the bathroom to take a shower, careful not to catch a glimpse of himself in the mirror as he goes.


End file.
